Strength to Go On
by LadySilver
Summary: A series of unrelated ficlets for hurt/comfort bingo round 3. READ WARNINGS!
1. Mirrored

**Characters:** Jackson

**Word Count:** 500

**Summary:** What you see if what you get.

**Warnings:** dark!fic, descriptions of torture and amputation

**Mirrored**

Jackson awoke to the sounds of his own screams reverberating off the cement walls that surrounded him. He struggled against the ropes that bound his chest, all the while hearing the screams being torn from his throat and not understanding that they were his or why he had to listen to them. Dim yellow light drifted in through the dirt-streaked window on the wall, showing the dark pools on the dirtier cement floor. He's been here so long, so much longer than he can remember, and it's all been dark and dirt and that horrible noise that has burned his chest raw from the inside out.

He twists his body and feels the ropes tighten, digging in, but he's facing a new direction now. There's silence. A mirror is propped against the wall; it's also streaked with dirt and oily smears. The light hits it well enough to show him the silhouette of himself reflected back, but it's wrong, so wrong. The familiar outline is truncated at the shoulders.

And he doesn't want to, but he does anyway because he always questions what the mirror shows him. He looks down at himself, his eye tracing the lines of where his arms should be.

They cut them off.

They fucking cut them off.

To keep him from escaping.

To torture him.

To destroy him.

He can't choose.

They didn't use anesthetic.

Or care.

They held him down and carved,

taunted,

laughed at their own cleverness.

The stumps of his arms have healed over; _they_ would have expected that. Cut off his arms first, cut him in half later, when they got what they wanted. He's shirtless and covered in dried blood that chafes under the ropes. Blood cakes his hair, sticks to his lips and eyelashes.

His mouth opens, his throat closes. No more sounds emerge. He's beyond that point now.

The floorboards quiver with footsteps overhead. He can hear _them_ plotting. They're so proud of themselves. He grits his teeth, feels his heart thudding in his chest. The air is thick with damp and piss and persistent agony

that spilled from his control.

He won't be doing that again.

Movement in the mirror catches his eyes. He sees the silhouette raise its shoulder like it wants to wave. The arms are gone. If he had them, he could easily escape. They've been severed, chopped from his body. Limbs don't grow back, even for werewolves.

He's not a werewolf.

Jackson closes his eyes and concentrates on his body harder than ever. He visualizes the muscle groups in his shoulders and arm, how they stretched and contracted during workouts, how they ached afterward. He thinks about his fingers, how they will gouge into the tissue of his tormentors' necks and rip out their revenge. He imagines claws and scales spreading across his flesh and how much _better_ this makes him.

His eyes snap open.

He grins into the mirror, two rows of sharp teeth barred,

and raises his arms to unbind himself.

END

_A/N: For the prompt: loss of limb/limb function_

_A/N: Strange formatting is intentional._


	2. Hot to the Touch

**Pairing:** Scott/Stiles

**Word Count: **1109

**Rating:** K+

**Summary:** Scott helps Stiles with his sunburn.

**Hot to the Touch**

"I just want you to know that you suck," Stiles stated definitively.

"I suck?" Scott replied, raising an eyebrow at the out-of-nowhere comment. Up until Stiles's pronouncement, the boys had been talking about how great their trip to the beach had been. There'd been waves, Frisbees, bikinis, and absolutely no one trying to kill either of them. They couldn't have asked for a better, more normal, afternoon.

Stiles nodded, then winced. "You definitely suck. I mean, can you even _get _sunburned?" He waved a hand toward Scott who was still dressed in his swim trunks and sandals. While Scott's skin was darker than it had been that morning, there was no sign of the raging red that covered Stiles's face and body and that made the touch of air too much for his tender skin. Not for the first time, he cursed his Polish complexion that practically burned at the first _mention_ of the word sun. He was now sitting gingerly on the edge of Scott's bed, unable to lay back or stand up since he was sure his skin would crack and peel right off his body if he did. Meanwhile, his best friend was sprawled across that bed without any thought being given to how unfair it was that he was flaunting how much he didn't hurt.

"I've been sunburned," Scott reminded him, thinking back to the previous summer and how his first day windsailing had ended with him throwing up from heat exhaustion. It had taken two days to recover enough to mentally tolerate going back outside.

Stiles scoffed. "I meant _now_, with your super-wolf-healing powers. You can't get sunburned, can you? You'll just tan and tan and tan—"

"You should've put sunblock on," Scott interrupted. He propped his head up on his arms and took in Stiles's cooked-lobster visage. Stiles also hadn't changed out of his swim trunks, mostly because any other clothing would inevitably touched the burned parts of his body. Stark demarcation lines on his thighs and waist marked where the fabric had protected him. If possible, those lines were redder than the rest of his friend's skin. They also made him look like he'd been assembled from mismatched parts.

"I did!" Stiles wailed.

Scott fished the plastic bottle out of the pile of damp towels and discarded street clothes on the floor and inspected the label. Stiles had indeed gotten the heavy duty sunblock, the kind that vampires would choose in those movies where the sun made vampires combust. Since he was thinking about it, though … "You're not a vampire, are you?" The corner of his mouth curled up on the question as he fought to keep a straight face.

"No, I'm not a vampire, you idiot," Stiles snapped. "There's no such thing as vampires."

"Had to check," Scott replied. He dropped the bottle back into the pile. "Since, you know, I can hear my mom making garlic bread and…."

"You know what I think?" Stiles bulled on. "I think the sunscreen was defective. Yeah. I bet it's not even sunscreen in that bottle. I bet it's just hand lotion, or something."

Scott sat up at that. The mattress bounced under his shifted weight and Stiles let out a pained groan. "Lie down," he ordered, as he ducked out of his room and headed for his mom's.

"Not gonna happen," Stiles called after him. "No way, never again. And did I say no? I am _never_ moving from this spot!"

Scott returned a moment later, his arms laden with bottles of creams and lotions that his mom liked. "Never?" He let the pile fall onto the bed next to Stiles and started rifling through them. There hadn't been anything in her bathroom that specifically addressed sunburn, but he knew that any lotion that didn't contain alcohol should help.

Stiles eyed the search, frowning when Scott's hand rested too long on a bottle of Vanilla-Rose scented cream and biting his lip when Scott's hand brushed past a Black Currant one. To tease him, Scott let his hand drift back toward the Vanilla-Rose, grinning as Stiles's heart rate rose. He finally selected the Black Currant, and heard a hitch in Stiles's breathing that had nothing to do with worry. Scott crawled on the bed behind his friend without comment, the bottle gripped tight.

Stiles tensed up in anticipation. At the first sting of the cold cream spilling onto his back, he flinched. The lotion started to work its magic and the coolness dissipated. More cream was slathered on as if Scott planned to use the entire bottle in one go, and then the weight of Scott's warm hands came to rest on his shoulders. They should have hurt, yet they didn't—which didn't mean they wouldn't. "There had better not be any claws on those fingers," Stiles warned.

Scott huffed out a laugh. "Don't worry," he replied. "I wouldn't do that to you." Leaning closer to Stiles's ear, he added in a low voice, "Just remember that you said 'never'." Then his hands started to move, smearing the strongly scented lotion all down Stiles's arms, over his shoulder blades, down the curve of his back.

Stiles shivered under the touch, and under the relief of the sunburn's pain easing. He sighed, a long exhalation that seemed to drain his muscles of their strength to keep him upright. Was this why he never remembered how badly he sunburned? Out loud, he commented, "I only speak the truth."

"Liar," Scott whispered. His hands lifted away and Stiles leaned back, reflexively searching for their touch.

Stiles heard the depression of plastic as the lotion bottle was squeezed, and then Scott's hands were back, curling around his ribcage and onto his stomach, his breath adding extra coolness to where the lotion moistened his shoulders. Stiles shivered again. "Fine," he replied. "You still suck."

Scott's eyebrow quirked and the smile pulled again at his mouth. "As long as you don't hold that against me," he said, and let his hands drift toward that fierce red line at Stiles's waist.

END

_A/N: Fulfills h/c prompt: burns_


	3. Cross the Bridge, Bear the Cross

**Characters:** Victoria Argent, Derek Hale

**Word Count: **2000

**Rating:** K+

**Summary:** The Hunters have strong opinions about werewolves. For one of them, those are going to need to change.

**Notes:** Spoilers for 2x09, for h/c bingo prompt: deprogramming, and angst bingo prompt: restraints

**Cross the Bridge, Bear the Cross**

"Animal!" Victoria hissed into the darkness. "Monster!" She struggled against the bonds that held her to the chair she had awoken to find herself lashed to, but it was no use. The _thing_ that had bound her knew too well, better than she, what her strength was. "Abomination!" Its scent was everywhere, filling a space that echoed with openness: distant walls and high ceilings amplifying the push and pull of her breath and the scrapes of her chair legs against cement floor. The darkness was absolute, not a shred of light under a doorway or through a window. This room had been prepared for her, for this.

"I am what you are now," her captor replied, striding closer to her from wherever he had been standing. Victoria refused to let her vision slip from the human spectrum, so she couldn't see him. Her hearing, she had no control over. His heartbeat pounded steadily through the darkness and his steps were confident. His voice was more tenor than she remembered it—she always remembered him having a deeper voice than he did—but there was no mistaking who he was: Derek Hale. "Are those labels you're willing to accept about yourself?" he asked, the challenge clear.

Victoria snarled: _Stupid question_. They weren't labels; they were in her life had she not believed them, and the feel of the full moon tainting her body had only reinforced her knowledge. "You should have let me die."

"_You_ should have known that a knife through your heart wouldn't be enough," he countered. Derek paused, probably taking a second to survey her because _he_ would have no qualms about using his misbegotten abilities. He clicked his tongue at what he saw. "I don't believe you really wanted to die."

Victoria twisted her hands, testing the give on the chain wrapped around them. She didn't bother to correct him.

"How does it feel to have become what you hate?"

Again, she kept her silence; the fact that she couldn't see him made it easier. His voice could be coming from anywhere. His scent was weak, as if he had merely passed through the room hours before and now was projecting his part of the play in from elsewhere. It was an illusion, one created via sensory input she didn't know how to interpret, but it seemed oddly fitting.

"You're going to see things very differently now," he continued. "You'll discover… that we're really not that bad." He stated his point, sounding so pleased with himself that Victoria wanted to spit. She settled for throwing herself against her bonds again, which succeeded only in tipping the chair backward and off-balance. She quickly corrected the problem, yet could still hear the smug smile lingering in the air.

How wrong he was, too. Werewolves were killers; history was replete with stories of werewolf rampages, the monsters killing dozens or scores of innocents for no reason whatsoever. That's why the Hunters existed, to put the beasts down before they could give in to their urges. She knew how strong those urges were, too; she had felt that bloodlust coursing through her in the seconds before the knife had penetrated her chest. Only the power of her will had allowed her to keep them in check.

Now she was trapped here, at the mercy of whatever game Hale was playing. She envisioned wrapping her hands around his neck, her fingernails digging into the soft tissue. It didn't help. She was still bound and, she suspected, would soon be gagged once he believed he had learned from her what he could. Who knew how long he would leave her this way. Until the next night? The next full moon?

The chains were wrapped tight, grinding her wrists together, but maybe... She began manipulating her hands against the bonds to dislocate her thumbs, a technique she had spent months mastering early in her Hunter training. The give in the chains was miniscule, but it might be enough.

"I know all about you and your kind," she spoke, dredging up words to mask any noises her other efforts might be making. "La bête. The Gandillons. Stubb." She named off more, with each piling more contempt on the name than the last. Murderous, monstrous, beasts, killing for the sheer thrill of death, or for no reason at all. Killing because they couldn't help themselves.

The laugh that cut through the darkness was short and dismissive. "Stories, all of them. Stories told about _human _psychopaths to make _humans_ feel better. Stories that are hundreds of years old. You'll have to try harder than that."

"Peter Hale," she said, the name dropping off her tongue as if it had been waiting for the moment.

"Kate Argent," Derek countered, just as quickly.

Victoria felt a touch of shame at the reminder, not because of what Kate had done, but because of how sloppily the execution had been carried out. That Kate had left survivors was inexcusable, a sign of her immaturity and the brashness of youth that had led her to overestimate her abilities. That Victoria had trusted Kate to carry out the execution order was a sign of Victoria's. She had devoted a great deal of time and energy to correcting those flaws in her personality in the intervening years. Kate hadn't, and had ultimately paid the price.

"Peter was born a werewolf," Derek pointed out, as if she didn't know that the mongrels put no shame in propagating through all the methods available to them: breed or bite, it didn't seem to matter how many lives were destroyed in the process. Yet another reason their numbers needed to be controlled. Continuing, Derek said, "He lived his entire life without killing anyone, until _Hunters _decided that he was a threat for _existing_." He snorted softly. "If he was the monster, then who do you think his Frankenstein was?"

Victoria shook her head in surprise. The idea that Derek would have read a book, much less that book, struck her as absurd in the same way that she'd feel if someone insisted that their pet alligator liked to cuddle. Feral beasts didn't do those things. But Derek had, and he'd gotten the allusion correct. She wondered if Allison—or Kate, for that matter—would have known which character in the story was Frankenstein.

"Werewolves can learn control," Derek was saying, as if his words were getting through, rather than her silence being from the effort of keeping up with the tangents of her thoughts. In the pitch black room, with its distant walls distorting all the sounds, her imagination felt larger than ever, her thoughts wilder, and it was taking more effort than it should to keep her focus where it needed to be. Long ago, she had learned all the lessons the Hunters had to offer about controlling one's body, about not giving in to fear, or panic, or fatigue. Working herself free now was taking more focus than it should, but still less than she had to give. "We teach our kind _not_ to kill."

"We hunt those who hunt us," she ground out, just as one thumb dislocated. She began to shimmy the chain over her hand, all the while having to will the injury from healing. The escape was harder than she remembered.

"You hunt those who did nothing to you!" Derek roared. She smiled at how she had made him lose control, certain that he had given in to the shift as well and was now standing before her with his true face on. Yet, no red showed where his eyes would have to be. She heard a large inhalation, one meant for finding calm, then an equally large exhalation. "Look at what you've accomplished. Look at the _success _of your efforts." He went silent, no doubt expecting her to follow his command.

Only because her concentration was elsewhere did she get a flash of Kate's tombstone against the verdant cemetery lawn. For a second, she thought she caught an acrid whiff of ashes and burning plastic. Then came a touch on her arm reminiscent of how her Allison used to press close when she needed her mother. The blood caked shirt she still wore from her attempt at suicide rubbed against her skin as she moved, the roughness a persistent reminder of what had brought her here.

"Now you're a target," Derek told her, as if she didn't know that. As if she didn't know why. "Are you prepared to have your husband slice you in half? Your father-in-law? Your daughter."

_Yes_, Victoria thought. "Yes." Clear, definitive—a position wrought from habit and training. This is what happened to Hunters who got bitten. She was hardly the first. And yet…. The shame was back, and with it a sense of failure rather than pride.

Now it was Derek's turn not to respond. She could hear his heart thumping, steady and slowly, not the slightest hint that seconds before he'd been yelling. She felt a flash of admiration at his control, and hint of doubt about the common knowledge that werewolves were forever teetering on the edge of ripping out the nearest throat.

A loop of chain slid off her hand. The scrapes it left behind began to heal, and she paused in her efforts to assess her next move. Once she had her hands free, there was still the matter of the chains binding her body and her feet, none of which she could see. Then she would have to get past Derek, and until she had reason to believe otherwise, she was going to plan as if the rest of the pack were lying in wait. Then what? Was she going to return to… the other Argents…for the purpose of having them kill her?

"It's not going to work," Derek spoke through the darkness. At first she thought he was suggesting that she wouldn't be able to seek death, a point both of them knew was ridiculous. She had always prided herself on her ability to do what was necessary. Then she realized that he was talking about her escape. She stilled her efforts while trying to work through what had given her away. Was it a change in her breathing pattern? A hitch in her heartrate? A miniscule clink of one chain against another that she had underestimated his ability to discern? As if following her thoughts, Derek supplied an answer: "You _might _be able to remove them, but it won't matter. The chains aren't the only thing restraining you."

Her eyes went wide, then narrowed to glare furiously at where she determined her captor to be. Her Alpha. "Why use the chains, then?" she growled.

"Because you understand them," he replied, his words soft, almost thoughtful. He let the comment hang in the air for a long moment, the only other sounds the thrumming of her pulse. When he continued, he sounded more like his usual self: "You have a lot to learn. Until you do, you're too dangerous to let run free."

She expected him to say more, to offer up threats, to start an interrogation. Instead, he turned on his heel and left, leaving her alone. The lights stayed off.

The determination that had been fueling her faltered at that, all the tiny pricks of doubt and upset weakening her. She shoulder throbbed where the bite had been, and her chest ached from where the knife had slid into her heart. The warehouse remained devoid of any light, but outside its walls, for the first time, she could hear the footsteps of the others as they gathered in waiting. From somewhere farther away, a howl rose up; it was all she could do not to throw her head back in response. She thrust out her chest, pushing against the chains and the taking advantage of the small amount of give she'd been able to create. She needed to escape.

Her family was out there, waiting.

END


	4. Chilled

**Characters:** Scott/Isaac

**Rating:** K+

**Summary:** Scott helps Isaac deal with a nightmare.

**Notes:** For h/c bingo prompts: hypothermia and wildcard: nightmares

**Warnings:** References to canon child abuse.

**Chilled**

"C-c-c-cold," Isaac chattered in his sleep. "Dad, it's cold. Please." He rolled over, drawing his knees up so that he was huddled on the bed into as tight a ball as his gangly limbs allowed.

Scott leveraged himself onto his elbow, instantly awake at the sounds of distress. In the darkness of the pre-dawn, Scott reached over and gently touched Isaac's shoulder. Isaac wasn't prone to nightmares, but this wasn't the first one Scott had seen him experience, and he knew that waking Isaac up could be dangerous. Though it would have helped him see, he kept himself from shifting, afraid of frightening Isaac more when he did awaken. "It's OK," he murmured. "It's over. You can wake up."

"No. No. No. Don't," Isaac mumbled. He scratched at the air above his head as if pushing at the freezer lid. His fingers were tipped with sharp claws, and Scott had to wonder if dream-Isaac also had those claws. Scott had seen the inside of the freezer in the Laheys' basement, the marks from normal human fingernails that covered the interior. As a werewolf he would have been able to shred his way out, a fact that no doubt contributed to Isaac's decision to accept the bite. Now, however, his teeth were clacking, his eyes moving rapidly behind his eyelids as the nightmare/memory trapped him more effectively than the appliance ever did.

Scott scooted closer, pressing the full length of his body along Isaac's. He could only hope that his heat would seep through his boyfriend's perceptions, would help pull him back. Isaac was warmer than normal, despite the shudders that ran down his body. "It's over," Scott repeated, alternating with his boyfriend's name. "Isaac, it's over."

He knew better than to say it wasn't real, because it was and had been, and he'd never want to treat Isaac as if that part of his history was something to be denied or suppressed. But, he could safely remind him that it was _history_. The freezer was destroyed, Isaac's father dead; Isaac had moved in with the McCalls as a foster child, and then had somehow moved into Scott's room and bed, with a baffled Melissa only able to throw up her hands and quip about the utter lack of resources on parenting werewolves. Tonight, at least, she was at the hospital, and Scott was on his own to help.

While continuing his murmuring, Scott began stroking down Isaac's side, touching skin as much as he could under the t-shirt and shorts that Isaac slept in. The shuddering stopped, but the nightmare didn't. Isaac's foot kicked out into the empty air. "C-can't f-feel…." Isaac whimpered, and Scott pushed closer, pushed for more warmth. "D-dad?" His call to his father sounded so plaintive, so hopeful, as if Mr. Lahey hadn't meant to lock his son in the freezer and would let him out as soon as he realized his mistake. Tears leaking from Isaac's eyes made Scott redouble his efforts.

"Isaac, it's over. You're safe," Scott repeated, brushing his fingers through his boyfriend's curly hair. There was a moment of stillness, a long second between breaths and heartbeats when Scott wasn't sure if anything had changed, and then Isaac's eyes fluttered, and opened. They glowed yellow, then faded to blue. Isaac blinked vacantly toward the open window, the curtains pulsing in the faint summer breeze.

"See, you woke up," Scott told him. He stilled his stroking and settled into simply holding the traumatized boy, his arms positioned to comfort rather than constrict. While he watched, Isaac's claws also disappeared and his body relaxed, letting him fit more comfortably into the curve of Scott's torso. The position wasn't perfect since Scott was the shorter of the two, but it was what was necessary.

"D-didn't think I would," Isaac replied, his voice small and hoarse, as if he'd been screaming for too long.

"You did," Scott reminded him.

"Almost didn't." He captured Scott's arm and pulled it around him, hugging it like it was a child's security toy. He didn't need to elaborate; Scott already knew the story: how Mr. Lahey had finally opened the freezer and found his son unconscious and barely breathing; how he'd brought him to the ER, claiming that his teenage son had trapped himself in it while playing a game; how Isaac's "reward" for not telling was that the freezer was unplugged.

"But you did," Scott insisted, more forcefully. He dimly remembered the week in eighth grade when Isaac had been the talk of the cafeteria, the school's rumor mill vacillating wildly between accusations of their classmate suffering from a bizarre accident or pursuing an attempted suicide. No one ever guessed the truth, and Scott was determined to make up for that as best as he could. "You will. You'll always wake up."

Isaac released a deep sigh, angling onto his back, his long body once again spread the length of the mattress. He held tight to Scott's arm. "Yeah," he said, as if he were just now realizing that it was true. A moment later he added a simple, innocent, "Warm." His eyes slipped closed, and he was asleep again as if the whole nightmare had never happened.

"Always," Scott answered into the darkness. He rearranged himself to get as comfortable as possible in the enforced position, ending up with his pillow on Isaac's shoulder and his legs wrapped around Isaac's. With his one free hand, he tugged the sheet up over both of them as best he could and settled in. The sun was starting to peek over the horizon before he felt his own sleep reclaiming him. As he drifted off, he thought about how much healing Isaac needed, and how interesting it was that what one werewolf could offer another was protection from the cold.

END


	5. Inducted

**Characters: **Kate Argent, Gerard Argent

**Rating: **T

**Word Count: **807

**Warnings/Notes: **Torture, for fan_flashworks prompt: wire, and h/c bingo prompt: torture

**Summary: **For her 10th birthday, Kate gets an experience that's ... _electric_.

**Inducted**

Kate Argent had tough shoes to fill. As the youngest child, the only girl, the "surprise," she peered up at her brothers with unadorned hero worship and dreamed of the time when she'd finally be big enough, old enough, _man_ enough to join their camping trips, their sports teams, and their secret conversations.

She had been taught to track as soon as she could walk and taught to shoot a gun as soon as she could wrap her tiny hands around the stock—just like her brothers—yet, there was always something _different_ about how her father spoke to her and what he expected from her.

At night, he would tuck the covers around her shoulders, lean down to kiss her forehead, and then gaze at her with a strange intensity that brought goosebumps to her arms. Sometimes, instead of a bedtime story, he would tell her how when he had held her for the first time, he had looked into the steel, undetermined blue of his daughter's eyes and known that she was going to restore pride to the Argent name. She had a destiny, he said.

She liked the word— .yyyyy—the way it rolled off his tongue, the syllables stretched nearly to the point of breaking. She didn't know what it meant, but it felt important. Too important to share.

Her brothers stared in bafflement the one time she brought it up, then promptly broke into a round of teasing: "Dainty Katie," one of them shouted, as if she had been complaining about the work being too rough. The others picked up the thread, and soon "Dainty Katie" was all they called her. No matter that she had held her own before, as soon as the nickname was assigned, the boys began treating her as if she were too fragile and timid to do what they did. At first she resented the attitude, then she began to understand it for the challenge it was. Holding her own wasn't enough; she had to make herself _better_.

For her 10th birthday, she received her reward. Her father took her down into the cellar under the barn, a dank, rock lined room that reeked of mildew and rotting things. The kids had been forbidden to go down there on punishment of death, and not even a triple dog dare was enough to risk testing the threat. In the beam of the flashlight in her father's hand, she saw a hunk of shadow against the far wall. It groaned and lifted its heavy head to reveal a mouthful of sharp, inhuman, teeth. Kate cocked her head and studied the monster, comparing it to the ones that her imagination had supplied from the other bedtime stories. It fell so far short that she nearly sighed in disappointment.

Her father flicked on the lights and flooded the room in brightness that ate all the remaining shadows. On a wooden table in the middle of the room sat an array of equipment with a large red bow planted on the top. Dials and meters hummed and jittered with electricity and promise. "This is for you, Kate," he intoned, slinging a proud arm over her shoulder. "You're the only one who's strong enough." He showed her how the wires led from the machines to the beast, explained how the voltage controlled what the beast could and couldn't do. Electrodes peppered the beast's body, each wire with a unique purpose that she couldn't wait to discover. A grin curved her mouth at the power that she was being entrusted with, at finally getting to learn what _destiny _meant.

He indicated a button and stepped back. "Go ahead, dear."

Kate reached out with all the confidence that "Dainty Katie" could never have and pressed the button. She imagined that she could see the current slipping down the wires and into the waiting body. The beast jumped and cried out, its body surging with electricity. Its agonized yell echoed off the rock, her delighted laughter filling in the spaces.

As her father looked on, his steady voice explaining what she could do now and what she would need to wait for other birthdays to learn, Kate thought about her brothers. They were back at home, no doubt asleep. How jealous they would be of her present. Only, they'd never know. They could believe what they wanted to about her now; she would never tell them otherwise, because _they _were only boys, and she had been right all along.

She stretched up on her toes to grasp a switch toward the back. A glance at her father's face showed only approval, his blue eyes glistening. The switch flicked with barely a touch. A wire crackled with energy and the beast's body bucked, its muscles spasming at her command. A human mask slipped over the monster's face, and Kate laughed again.

END


	6. Cold Comfort

**Characters: **Chris Argent, OMC

**Word Count: **1545

**Rating: **K+

**Warnings/Notes:** Underage drinking, guns, minor character death, pre-canon, for h/c bingo prompt: bullet wounds**  
**

**Summary:** When Chris was still a teenager and learning how to be a Hunter, he had a friend...

**Cold Comfort**

Chris took aim at his target, the stock of the gun comfortable and and secure in his grip. Letting his breath out slowly, he squeezed back on the trigger. With an explosion of glass, the beer bottle at the other end of the clearing shattered, and David, his best friend, let out an appreciative whoop, pumping his arm in the air.

"Sweet shot, man," David complimented, a soft whistle offering extra proof of his appreciation. "It never stood a chance."

Chris nodded once, lowering the weapon. He eyed the stump of brown glass that remained and nodded again. A few weeks ago, he never would have been able to make that shot. He offered a grunt of acknowledgement and turned his attention to the next target: another empty beer bottle stationed a few feet farther away. This one would be trickier, but he was determined to clear all the targets today. Getting time to just be a teen and hang out with his friends was often a tall order, but he could sometimes get his mother to relent if he promised to combine the time with training, which was why he was here now. Reporting back to her that he'd successfully hit all the targets today might just brighten her mood enough to get permission for an actual date. As much as he enjoyed spending time with David, he had hopes for a different kind of leisure over the upcoming weekend.

The boys had spent some time working on tracking, then set up the target range in a small clearing deep enough in the trees to keep people from hearing the gunshots. The day had been hot with only a rare breeze to rustle through the leaves and offer respite from the temperature. Chris could feel the dampness from his sweat around the neck and armpits of his shirt, and knew David was no better off. He licked his lips, noting their dryness, and decided to reward himself with some water after he took out the next target. As if anticipating him, David retrieved a slim metal flask from a pocket in his cargo shorts. "Have some juice for good luck," he said, holding it out.

Chris let the barrel drop, always careful never to point it at anything he wasn't ready to shoot, and rounded on his friend. "Put that away! Alcohol _or_ guns. One or the other," he snapped. "You know the rules."

David met his glare, his brown eyes meeting Chris's blue, and squared his shoulders. Though slightly taller than Chris, David was all sinew and bone, a guy who looked like his joints weren't assembled correctly. Once in motion, he was pure grace. Until then, he looked like he would fall apart if bumped into. He was no threat to Chris's more compact strength. "It's always about the rules with you, isn't it?" he mocked. "Stop being such a wet blanket." Eyes still locked, he took a defiant sip from the flask.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Chris demanded. It was all he could do not to rip the flask from his friend's hand and grind it into the dirt. That, or punch his friend for being a deliberate dick.

"Just trying to lighten up, _dude_." David took another draw, then barred his teeth, as if daring Chris to follow through on his impulses.

Chris watched the action, then with deliberate motions began unloading his gun. Setting the pieces on the ground—still without breaking eye contact—he stood up with a single bullet pinched between his fingers. "This," he said, his voice low and serious, "is not a joke. What we _do_ is not a joke. How are we supposed to protect others if we won't follow that rules that protect us?"

"Is that Chris Argent talking? Or Gerard Argent?" David shot back. He took a step closer to Chris, arms tensing as if preparing to take a swing.

Chris didn't move; he'd faced down too many werewolves to be cowed by such a mundane threat. "Someone has to keep you from getting yourself killed," he answered, thinking about how carelessly David threw himself into dangerous situations. David had raised eyebrows in Hunter circles for being a little _too _eager to chase down werewolves, a little _too _reckless at throwing himself at monsters.

"Though," Chris continued, making no effort to disguise how much he disliked the comparison David had made, "if you ever say I'm like my father again, the weres won't get a chance to get their claws in you." He turned away and began cleaning up the debris from their afternoon shooting practice. If David's expression darkened for an instant, Chris figured it was because the argument was only starting. He'd never had to turn on his friend before, and something about how David had courted it suggested that their differences—whatever they were—were going to take more than a couple of thrown punches to resolve.

He spent the hike back trying to work out what had set David off; it wasn't like him to be so cavalier about gun safety, and then to taunt Chris the way he had—everyone knew that Chris and his father didn't exactly see eye-to-eye. Since David seemed to be brooding under a storm cloud of his own making, Chris had plenty of time to think. They'd spent more time in the woods than planned, and the sun was a spread of pink light across the horizon by the time they reached the parking lot. Only David's car remained, the boys having driven out to the forest preserve together. The car had been a birthday present for David, and it wasn't much, but it ran and that was all that mattered to either of the boys.

David came to a stop at the edge of the lot and set down the bag of gear he'd been carrying. "Chris?" He dug his hand into a different pocket and came up with his keys which he wrapped his fingers around, his grip tight as if the keys were oiled and slippery.

Chris had continued to the car and was now standing impatiently by the trunk, waiting to deposit his own gear. The bag had grown nearly as heavy as the silence on the hike, and he couldn't wait to get rid of it. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to keep his tone neutral. "It's getting late. Our parents are expecting us for dinner."

"You've got my back, right? You won't let any hard feelings stop you from doing the right thing?"

The desperation in David's voice kept Chris from responding that those were two very different questions, and right now he wasn't sure if they warranted the same answer. So, he lied, responding as if the answer was and would always be obvious: "Yeah."

David deflated, a tension in his body that Chris hadn't realized was there uncoiling. "Thank you," he murmured, the words so soft that a raucous chirping of birds nearly swallowed them, and Chris didn't want to ask for a repeat in case he heard wrong. A teasing glint lit David's eye then, the kind of glint that too often resulted in reprimands. He jangled the keys once, then tossed them underhanded to Chris. "Good. You drive." There was still enough light left in the rapidly darkening evening for Chris to track the toss and make the catch, and he was so pleased with himself for not missing what would otherwise be an easy catch that he didn't stop to wonder what trouble David was courting now.

Later that night, after putting the bullet in David's head, it all starts to make sense. Chris hunkers on the side of the road, his stomach having been emptied into the weeds, and stares at the body of his best friend. David's eyes are closed and his mouth slightly open. All traces of the burning yellow and elongated canines are gone.

The hole in David's forehead is deceptively small; the damage looks minimal compared to the shattered bottles—and the kick of the gun in his hand hadn't been anywhere near as satisfying. The two wounds in the chest are little more than darkened splotches on a dark shirt. David's hand is left reaching forward, his palm curled up as if to accept a small gift. Chris understands that as the second part of the thank you that David whispered earlier.

Chris knows he did the right thing. David had all but made him promise to be the one to shoot him after the moon started to rise, after the change started to take hold. He would have done it anyway, he realizes: Because that's what he'd trained his entire life to do; because he couldn't let his best friend succumb to the beast that had stolen his body; because he couldn't sacrifice him to Gerard's condemnation or his sword; because the best death was one done quickly and out of mercy. David had had entrusted Chris in the ultimate sign of friendship.

It's a cold comfort, but as Chris waits under the stars, gun in hand, to make sure the body doesn't move again, he realizes that it's the best he's going to get. And his father would be so proud.

END


End file.
